What would the continents of North and South America be like today if...?

Question

Christopher Columbus said, "Yeah, it's flat, whatever. Just let me sleep'?

spyblitz - I always wondered why they couldn't come up with something more creative than The United States of America. Food for another question?

A few of you have brought up really good points that I didn't think of when I posted this question. I should have worded it in more general terms because I was actually think what would it be like if the Europeans stay at home. But I guess, no matter what, it was inevitable.
Thank you all for your answers and since there are a few good ones here, I'll let the voters decide.

Answer 1

They would be flat massive deserts with no wildlife at all. The injuns would have slash and burned the entire landscape. There would be nothing but low grade casinos on every corner and empty Pabst king cans littering the landscape.

Answer 2

There would be a lot less white people, no USA, which means the majority of world history would be completely and totally different. However, it is a total myth that people in Columbus' day thought the world was flat, and most likely because European powers at the time wanted a quicker route to India where they wouldn't have to deal with the Ottoman Empire they would have found someone else to sail across the Atlantic and found the Americas.

Answer 3

You can't expect a a complete answer to that question.Believe me when i say that i can write a 800 page book answering everything which would have gone wrong and right if America remained undiscovered.
Think everything from Global warming to Hitler and everything in between.
We think some nations are insignificant or some events are too but everything is related with a chain of events.
Take any example,I love video games,if America hadnt had dropped the Nuke on Japan then Japan would not have technological revolution and i would have been playing an 8-bit game in 2006.
Ohh,don't get me started.

Answer 4

Kind of a moot point. Check out the book "Guns,Germs, And Steel" by Jared Diamond. He asked why did the Europeans conquer the Americas and not the other way around? He won a Pulitzer Prize for it.
Also there is a PBS video:
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book and national best seller, Guns, Germs, and Steel is an epic detective story that offers a gripping expose on why the world is so unequal. Professor Jared Diamond traveled the globe for over 30 years trying to answer the biggest question of world history. Why is the world so unequal? The answers he found were simple yet extraordinary. Our destiny depends on geography and access to: Guns, Germs, and Steel

Answer 5

Christopher Columbus never actually made it to "America", only to the Bahamas, Hispaniola & Cuba. And contrary to popular belief, it was already widely acknowledged that the world was globe-shaped in Columbus' time, but no-body realized just how big the globe was. Which is why we have "West Indes" where we do! So to answer your question, things would probably be much the same...

Answer 6

...pretty much the same as they are now. Christopher Columbus had very little to do with colonizing the Western Hemisphere. Someone else would have run into the Americas if Columbus didn't because the wester route to India was a major lure.

One BIG difference would be the name. Amerigo Vespucci, would not have been imortalized as he is.

Answer 7

Probably not much different than it is today. The race to find a shorter route to the Spice Islands involved more than just CC. It would have been a matter of a very few years, probably less than a decade before someone else stumbled upon it.

We *might* have a different language, and we certainly would have fewer place names referring to Columbus, such as Washington, DC and Columbus Ohio. Oh yeah, and a lot of us might not exist, as our parents might have never met, because their parents never met because their parents never met.........There would be a whole lot of other individuals, but they would probably look and act very much like the population today.

Answer 8

It still would have eventually been discovered and settled, but maybe with more Native American influence. I would hope that at a later time they wouldn't have been thought upon as savages, and wouldn't have been slaughtered and moved off the land.

I don't know the effect it would have on our industrialization, though. It probably wouldn't have changed much, as Europe grew at a similar rate, if not the same, as we did.

It's almost too bad the Vikings didn't claim these lands first when they had the chance.

Answer 9

Well, true, someone would have eventually found it, especially because the Russians would have sent someone up in their rocket (Sputnik) and seen a giant landmass and wonder what it was, if it hadn't been found already. However, America seems to call people to it. The Jaredites, Nephites, Lamanites, etc. found it. The Lord would have sent someone if Christopher Columbus hadn't been urged to find a faster route to India.

Answer 10

Chris may not have been the one to wander over here.....but I'm sure someone (even by accident) would have eventually made it.

It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the native Americans had been warned about the Europeans and had time to organize themselves. Things would definitely had turned out different.

Hmmmmmm

Answer 11

it would be another protagonist, but a very similar history.
Spain and England already knew about the existence of a continent, a they were in desperate need of conquest.
Probably it would not pass the first mercantilism, and America will be "discovered" by somebody else.
the importance of America was the market it represents.